Episode 121: Building a Truly Regenerative Kitchen with Mollie Engelhart

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Earth Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mollie is a chef, restaurateur, and farmer with a strong commitment to regenerative agriculture and sustainable food practices. She operates Sage Regenerative Kitchen and Brewery in the Los Angeles area and runs Sow a Heart Farms with her husband in Fillmore, California. She actively promotes the restaurant industry to switch to using ingredients from regenerative farms. Mollie believes in supporting local farmers and making conscious choices about food consumption, including responsibly sourced meat products.

Mollie's previous menu options were all plant-based and the inclusion of meat options drew harsh criticism. Despite some initial resistance from customers, she emphasized the positive impact she hopes to have on both consumers and the farming industry through her commitment to sustainable practices.

In this episode, Mollie and John discuss:

Experiences that highlighted the necessity of integrating animals into farming practices
Difficulty in finding large-scale regenerative food service products
Advocates for smaller, decentralized systems for truly regenerative dairy practices
Other chefs adopting regenerative ingredients
The hidden human and environmental costs of cheap food
Advocating for regional food systems to reduce costs

Additional Resources:
For more information about Mollie, please visit: https://www.sowaheart.com/about-us

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.

AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.

Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, friends. This is John. Welcome back to the regenerative agriculture podcast, where we have all kinds of fun conversations related to regenerating landscapes, regenerating ecosystems,
0:09.0	regenerating our relationships at all levels throughout the supply chain. And ultimately, of course, we care about regenerating our planet and all the macro and micro pieces that that entails.
0:21.1	One of the pieces that is really important is connecting our relationships between,
0:27.8	from actual production and growing food to the people who eat that food.
0:31.2	I think it's very, on one hand, as farmers, we often like to take pride in the mantra that
0:36.2	we are feeding the world,
0:42.5	while at the same time being completely isolated and having no connection to the people who are actually directly consuming our food. And so I've been looking forward to having a conversation
0:47.0	with Molly Englehlehart who does bridge that last gap and is able to have conversations with many people who care directly
0:55.9	about the food that they are eating and able to offer some insights and some perspectives for us
1:02.6	into that dynamic. So Molly, thank you very much for being here today, for being willing to
1:06.6	share some of your story and some of the things that you've been experiencing. Tell us a little bit
1:11.8	about your history and your journey and the scope of the work that you're doing today. Oh,
1:17.4	excellent. Thank you so much for having me. I've been a fan and a listener for a long time.
1:22.6	I grew up on a farm in upstate New York, mostly apples. But I grew up vegetarian. My parents didn't eat
1:30.0	meat. And I went to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. And long story short, I ended up owning
1:38.1	restaurants. And I became a well-known vegan chef with big locations, multiple, you know, four, five thousand square
1:46.9	foot restaurants with full bar and huge, huge restaurants. And up until the pandemic, they were going
1:53.4	well. But in 2000, and I want to say 13, I listened to a Graham State TED talk that really
2:00.3	smack me on the side of the head because I was in this illusion that I was in Los Angeles, living in my comfortable life, driving my hybrid and bringing grocery stores to the grocery store and drinking an oat milk latte.
2:16.1	And somehow I thought I was more righteous
2:20.3	or better than other people that I was doing the right thing for the planet. And Gramsate in 12
2:26.9	minutes broke it down that I wasn't and that the biggest cause of methane is actually food scraps.
	...

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